The Pros & Cons
We like having these people in our neighbourhood. In a big, dirty, noisy, anonymous, soul-quenching concrete wasteland where you don’t even know the people in your own stairwell, having an informal community center inside the front entrance where people play, gossip, buy breakfast and lunch, etc. really changes the feel of the place. We get to smile and make small talk every time we come and go (and show off L), and the old guys sitting around doing nothing all day get just as big a kick out of it as we do, I think.

But it’s not simply a matter of vain city officials disregarding the poor in a selfish rush to create a sterile urban facade that will advance their careers and prestige (though no doubt that’s a big part of it); there are real downsides to having these vendors around. The chÇŽobÇng (ç‚’é¥¼) lady, whom we call “auntie” (å¤§å¨˜), leaves a pile of eggs shells, cabbage, and other rotting food waste right by the entrance every night. More than once when biking home from work at night I’ve seen and heard big rats scrounging around in it. These vendors are unregulated, and in China that often means things like dÃ¬gÅuyÃ³u (åœ°æ²Ÿæ²¹), cooking oil that was skimmed off the sewage scooped out of manholes outside of restaurants and resold in used-but-new-looking containers, usually to street vendors but often to restaurants as well. Street vendors also create traffic nightmares in a city where the traffic is already beyond brutal. Tianjin used to be known for its bustling street markets, which was a nice way of saying ridiculously crowded streets that you could barely push your bike through. These days such markets are harder to find, but I videoed a bike ride through one a couple blocks away.

Getting Kicked Out
Here’s the best shot we have of the vegetable selling scene, pre-eviction. It’s hard to see, but there are shelves of vegetables along the wall on the left, behind the chair and cabinet:

And here’s afterward, with their shelves and things torn down:

It doesn’t happen as sinisterly as I could make it sound in the telling; it’s not like there’s a squadron of stone-faced riot police that show up and bully people around. In our neighbourhood it means an unenthusiastic middle-aged guy, who looks just like the other middle-aged guys in our neighborhood aside from his rumpled, ill-fitting, cheap-looking uniform, standing off to the side smoking, almost apologetically telling the vendors they have to go. He’s just the messenger; he has no real power, but the people that sent him do and there’s nothing anyone can do about it except comply. He’s the opposite of intimidating.

We just returned from Inner Mongolia, where we saw many signs having slogans about “Wenming Chengshi…” (æ–‡æ˜Ž æˆå¸‚). Then we started seeing these slogans here in Shenyang. I’m sad to hear of the potential implications. I hope “civilization” does close or chase out all of my favorite food vendors.